THE TRADE UNIONS

Trade Unions in Russia are in a different position from that
which is common to all other Trades Unions in the world.
In other countries the Trades Unions are a force with whose
opposition the Government must reckon. In Russia the
Government reckons not on the possible opposition of the
Trades Unions, but on their help for realizing its most
difficult measures, and for undermining and overwhelming
any opposition which those measures may encounter. The
Trades Unions in Russia, instead of being an organization
outside the State protecting the interests of a class against the
governing class, have become a part of the State
organization. Since, during the present period of the
revolution the backbone of the State organization is the
Communist Party, the Trade Unions have come to be
practically an extension of the party organization. This, of
course, would be indignantly denied both by Trade
Unionists and Communists. Still, in the preface to the
All-Russian Trades Union Reports for 1919, Glebov, one of
the best-known Trade Union leaders whom I remember in
the spring of last year objecting to the use of bourgeois
specialists in their proper places, admits as much in the
following muddleheaded statement:-

"The base of the proletarian dictatorship is the Communist
Party, which in general directs all the political and economic
work of the State, leaning, first of all, on the Soviets as on
the more revolutionary form of dictatorship of the
proletariat, and secondly on the Trades Unions, as
organizations which economically unite the proletariat of
factory and workshop as the vanguard of the revolution, and
as organizations of the new socialistic construction of the
State. Thus the Trade Unions must be considered as a base
of the Soviet State, as an organic form complementary to the
other forms of the Proletariat Dictatorship." These two elaborate
sentences constitute an admission of what I have just said.

Trades Unionists of other countries must regard the fate of
their Russian colleagues with horror or with satisfaction,
according to their views of events in Russia taken as a
whole. If they do not believe that there has been a social
revolution in Russia, they must regard the present position of
the Russian Trades Unions as the reward of a complete
defeat of Trade Unionism, in which a Capitalist government
has been able to lay violent hands on the organization which
was protecting the workers against it. If, on the other hand,
they believe that there has been a social revolution, so that
the class organized in Trades Unions is now, identical with
the governing, class (of employers, etc.) against which the
unions once struggled, then they must regard the present
position as a natural and satisfactory result of victory.

When I was in Moscow in the spring of this year the Russian
Trades Unions received a telegram from the Trades Union
Congress at Amsterdam, a telegram which admirably
illustrated the impossibility of separating judgment of the
present position of the Unions from judgments of the
Russian revolution as a whole. It encouraged the Unions "in
their struggle" and promised support in that struggle. The
Communists immediately asked "What struggle?
Against the capitalist system in Russia which does not exist?
Or against capitalist systems outside Russia?" They said that
either the telegram meant this latter only, or it meant that its
writers did not believe that there had been a social revolution
in Russia. The point is arguable. If one believes that
revolution is an impossibility, one can reason from that
belief and say that in spite of certain upheavals in Russia the
fundamental arrangement of society is the same there as in
other countries, so that the position of the Trade Unions
there must be the same, and, as in other countries they must
be still engaged in augmenting the dinners of their members
at the expense of the dinners of the capitalists which, in the
long run (if that were possible) they would abolish. If, on
the other hand, one believes that social revolution has
actually occurred, to speak of Trades Unions continuing the
struggle in which they conquered something like three years
ago, is to urge them to a sterile fanaticism which has been
neatly described by Professor Santayana as a redoubling of
your effort when you have forgotten your aim.

It 's probably true that the "aim" of the Trades Unions
was more clearly defined in Russia than elsewhere. In
England during the greater part of their history the Trades
Unions have not been in conscious opposition to the State.
In Russia this position was forced on the Trades Unions
almost before they had time to get to work. They were
born, so to speak, with red flags in their hands. They grew
up under circumstances of extreme difficulty and
persecution. From 1905 on they were in decided opposition
to the existing system, and were revolutionary rather than
merely mitigatory organizations.

Before 1905 they were little more than associations for
mutual help, very weak, spending most of their energies in
self-preservation from the police, and hiding their character
as class organizations by electing more or less Liberal
managers and employers as "honorary members." 1905,
however, settled their revolutionary character. In September
of that year there was a Conference at Moscow, where it
was decided to call an All-Russian Trades Union Congress.
Reaction in Russia made this impossible, and the most they
could do was to have another small Conference in
February, 1906, which, however, defined their object as that
of creating a general Trade Union Movement organized on
All-Russian lines. The temper of the Trades Unions then,
and the condition of the country at that time, may be judged
from the fact that although they were merely working for the
right to form Unions, the right to strike, etc., they passed the
following significant resolution: "Neither from the present
Government nor from the future State Duma can be
expected realization of freedom of coalition. This
Conference considers the legalization of the Trades Unions
under present conditions absolutely impossible." The
Conference was right. For twelve years after that there were
no Trades Unions Conferences in Russia. Not until June,
1917, three months after the March Revolution, was the
third Trade Union Conference able to meet. This Conference
reaffirmed the revolutionary character of the Russian Trades Unions.

At that time the dominant party in the Soviets was that of the
Mensheviks, who were opposed to the formation of a Soviet
Government, and were supporting the provisional Cabinet of
Kerensky. The Trades Unions were actually at that time
more revolutionary than the Soviets. This third Conference
passed several resolutions, which show clearly enough that
the present position of the Unions has not been brought
about by any violence of the Communists from without, but
was definitely promised by tendencies inside the Unions at a
time when the Communists were probably the least
authoritative party in Russia. This Conference of June,
1917, resolved that the Trades Unions should not only
"remain militant class organizations . . . but . . . should
support the activities of the Soviets of soldiers and
deputies." They thus clearly showed on which side they
stood in the struggle then proceeding. Nor was this all. They
also, though the Mensheviks were still the dominant party,
resolved on that system of internal organizations and
grouping, which has been actually realized under the
Communists. I quote again from the resolution of this Conference:

"The evolution of the economic struggle demands from the
workers such forms of professional organization as, basing
themselves on the connection between various groups of
workers in the process of production, should unite
within a general organization, and under general leadership,
as large masses of workers as possible occupied in
enterprises of the same kind, or in similar professions. With
this object the workers should organize themselves
professionally, not by shops or trades, but by productions, so
that all the workers of a given enterprise should belong to
one Union, even if they belong to different professions and
even different productions." That which was then no more
than a design is now an accurate description of Trades
Union organization in Russia. Further, much that at present
surprises the foreign inquirer was planned and considered
desirable then, before the Communists had won a majority
either in the Unions or in the Soviet. Thus this same third
Conference resolved that "in the interests of greater
efficiency and success in the economic struggle, a
professional organization should be built on the principle of
democratic centralism, assuring to every member a share in
the affairs of the organization and, at the same time,
obtaining unity in the leadership of the struggle." Finally,
"Unity in the direction (leadership) of the economic
struggle demands unity in the exchequer of the Trades
Unions."

The point that I wish to make in thus illustrating the
pre-Communist tendencies of the Russian Trades Unions is not
simply that if their present position is undesirable they have
only themselves to thank for it, but that in Russia the Trades
Union movement before the October Revolution was
working in the direction of such a revolution, that the events
of October represented something like a Trade Union
victory, so that the present position of the Unions as part of
the organization defending that victory, as part of the system
of government set up by that revolution, is logical and was to
be expected. I have illustrated this from resolutions, because
these give statements in words easily comparable with what
has come to pass. It would be equally easy to point to deeds
instead of words if we need more forcible though less
accurate illustrations.

Thus, at the time of the Moscow Congress the Soviets, then
Mensheviks, who were represented at the Congress (the
object of the Congress was to whip up support for the
Coalition Government) were against strikes of protest. The
Trades Unions took a point of view nearer that of
the Bolsheviks, and the strikes in Moscow took place in spite
of the Soviets. After the Kornilov affair, when the Mensheviks
were still struggling for coalition with the bourgeois parties, the
Trades Unions quite definitely took the Bolshevik standpoint.
At the so-called Democratic Conference, intended as a
sort of life belt for the sinking Provisional Government,
only eight of the Trades Union delegates voted for a
continuance of the coalition, whereas seventy three voted against.

This consciously revolutionary character throughout their
much shorter existence has distinguished Russian from, for
example, English Trades Unions. It has set their course for
them.

In October, 1917, they got the revolution for which they had
been asking since March. Since then, one Congress after
another has illustrated the natural and inevitable development
of Trades Unions inside a revolutionary State
which, like most if not all revolutionary States, is attacked
simultaneously by hostile armies from without and by
economic paralysis from within. The excited and
lighthearted Trades Unionists of three years ago, who
believed that the mere decreeing of "workers' control" would
bring all difficulties automatically to an end, are now
unrecognizable. We have seen illusion after illusion scraped
from them by the pumice-stone of experience, while the
appalling state of the industries which they now largely
control, and the ruin of the country in which they attained
that control, have forced them to alter their immediate aims
to meet immediate dangers, and have accelerated the process
of adaptation made inevitable by their victory.

The process of adaptation has had the natural result of
producing new internal cleavages. Change after change in
their programme and theory of the Russian Trades Unionists
has been due to the pressure of life itself, to the urgency of
struggling against the worsening of conditions already almost
unbearable. It is perfectly natural that those Unions which
hold back from adaptation and resent the changes are
precisely those which, like that of the printers, are not
intimately concerned in any productive process, are
consequently outside the central struggle, and, while feeling
the discomforts of change, do not feel its need.

The opposition inside the productive Trades Unions is
of two kinds. There is the opposition, which is of merely
psychological interest, of old Trades Union leaders who
have always thought of themselves as in opposition to the
Government, and feel themselves like watches without
mainsprings in their new role of Government supporters.
These are men in whom a natural intellectual stiffness makes
difficult the complete change of front which was the logical
result of the revolution for which they had been working.
But beside that there is a much more interesting opposition
based on political considerations. The Menshevik standpoint
is one of disbelief in the permanence of the revolution, or
rather in the permanence of the victory of the town workers.
They point to the divergence in interests between the town
and country populations, and are convinced that sooner or
later the peasants will alter the government to suit
themselves, when, once more, it will be a government
against which the town workers will have to defend their
interests. The Mensheviks object to the identification of the
Trades Unions with the Government apparatus on the
ground that when this change, which they expect comes
about, the Trade Union movement will be so far
emasculated as to be incapable of defending the town
workers against the peasants who will then be the ruling
class. Thus they attack the present Trades Union leaders for
being directly influenced by the Government in fixing the
rate of wages, on the ground that this establishes a
precedent from which, when the change comes, it will be
difficult to break away. The Communists answer them by
insisting that it is to everybody's interest to pull Russia
through the crisis, and that if the Trades Unions were for
such academic reasons to insist on their complete
independence instead of in every possible way collaborating
with the Government, they would be not only increasing the
difficulties of the revolution in its economic crisis, but
actually hastening that change which the Mensheviks,
though they regard it as inevitable, cannot be supposed to
desire. This Menshevik opposition is strongest in the
Ukraine. Its strength may be judged from the figures of the
Congress in Moscow this spring when, of 1,300 delegates,
over 1,000 were Communists or sympathizers with them; 63
were Mensheviks and 200 were non-party, the bulk of whom,
I fancy, on this point would agree with the Mensheviks.

But apart from opposition to the "stratification" of the
Trades Unions, there is a cleavage cutting across the
Communist Party itself and uniting in opinion, though not in
voting, the Mensheviks and a section of their Communist
opponents. This cleavage is over the question of "workers'
control." Most of those who, before the revolution, looked
forward to the "workers' control", thought of it as meaning
that the actual workers in a given factory would themselves
control that factory, just as a board of directors controls a
factory under the ordinary capitalist system. The
Communists, I think, even today admit the ultimate
desirability of this, but insist that the important question is
not who shall give the orders, but in whose interest the
orders shall be given. I have nowhere found this matter
properly thrashed out, though feeling upon it is extremely
strong. Everybody whom I asked about it began at once to
address me as if I were a public meeting, so that I found
it extremely difficult to get from either side a statement not
free from electioneering bias. I think, however, that it
may be fairly said that all but a few lunatics have abandoned
the ideas of 1917, which resulted in the workmen in a
factory deposing any technical expert or manager whose
orders were in the least irksome to them. These ideas and
the miseries and unfairness they caused, the stoppages of
work, the managers sewn up in sacks, ducked in ponds and
trundled in wheelbarrows, have taken their places as
curiosities of history. The change in these ideas has been
gradual. The first step was the recognition that the State as a
whole was interested in the efficiency of each factory, and,
therefore, that the workmen of each factory had no right to
arrange things with no thought except for themselves. The
Committee idea was still strong, and the difficulty was got
over by assuring that the technical staff should be
represented on the Committee, and that the casting vote
between workers and technical experts or managers should
belong to the central economic organ of the State. The next
stage was when the management of a workshop was given a
so called "collegiate" character, the workmen appointing
representatives to share the responsibility of the "bourgeois
specialist." The bitter controversy now going on
concerns the seemingly inevitable transition to a later stage in
which, for all practical purposes, the bourgeois specialist will
be responsible solely to the State. Many Communists,
including some of the best known, while recognizing the
need of greater efficiency if the revolution is to survive at all,
regard this step as definitely retrograde and likely in the long
run to make the revolution not worth preserving.*[(*)Thus
Rykov, President of the Supreme Council of Public Economy:
"There is a possibility of so constructing a State that in it
there will be a ruling caste consisting chiefly of administrative
engineers, technicians, etc.; that is, we should get a form of
State economy based on a small group of a ruling caste
whose privilege in this case would be the management of the
workersand peasants." That criticism of individual control, from
a communist, goes a good deal further than most of the
criticism from people avowedly in opposition.] The enormous
importance attached by everybody to this question of individual
or collegiate control, may bejudged from the fact that at
every conference I attended, and every discussion to which
I listened, this point, which might seem of minor importance,
completely overshadowed the question of industrial conscription
which, at least inside the Communist Party, seemed generally
taken for granted. It may be taken now as certain
that the majority of the Communists are in favor of
individual control. They say that the object of "workers'
control" before the revolution was to ensure that factories
should be run in the interests of workers as well of
employers. In Russia now there are no employers other
than the State as a whole, which is exclusively made
up of employees. (I am stating now the view of the
majority at the last Trades Union Congress at
which I was present, April, 1920.) They say that "workers'
control" exists in a larger and more efficient manner than
was suggested by the old pre-revolutionary statements on
that question. Further, they say that if workers' control
ought to be identified with Trade Union control, the Trades
Unions are certainly supreme in all those matters with which
they have chiefly concerned themselves, since they dominate
the Commissariat of Labor, are very largely represented on
the Supreme Council of Public Economy, and fix the rates
of pay for their own members.(1)

The enormous Communist majority, together with the
fact that however much they may quarrel with each other
inside the party, the Communists will go to almost any
length to avoid breaking the party discipline, means that at
present the resolutions of Trades Union Congresses will not
be different from those of Communists Congresses on the
same subjects. Consequently, the questions which really
agitate the members, the actual cleavages inside that
Communist majority, are comparatively invisible at a Trades
Union Congress. They are fought over with great bitterness,
but they are not fought over in the Hall of the Unions-once
the Club of the Nobility, with on its walls on Congress days
the hammer and spanner of the engineers, the pestle and
trowel of the builders, and so on-but in the Communist
Congresses in the Kremlin and throughout the country.
And, in the problem with which in this book we are mainly
concerned, neither the regular business of the Unions nor
their internal squabbles affects the cardinal fact that in
the present crisis the Trades Unions are chiefly important as
part of that organization of human will with which the
Communists are attempting to arrest the steady progress of
Russia's economic ruin. Putting it brutally, so as to offend
Trades Unionists and Communists alike, they are an
important part of the Communist system of internal propaganda,
and their whole organization acts as a gigantic
megaphone through which the Communist Party makes
known its fears, its hopes and its decisions to the great
masses of the industrial workers.

(1)
The wages of workmen are
decided by the Trades Unions, who draw up "tariffs" for the
whole country, basing their calculations on three criteria:
(I) The price of food in the open market in the district
where a workman is employed, (2)the price of food supplied
by the State on the card system, (3)the quality of the workman.
This last is decided by a special section of the Factory Committee,
which in each factory is an organ of the Trades Union.